The present invention relates to a protector assembly for a roll cage on a vehicle. The protector assembly provides wear-protection to the tubing used to form the roll cage, to the extruded, cast, forged, machined, or otherwise formed uprights of the roll cage, and/or to other members of the roll cage, from grinding, scraping, cutting, abrading, and/or other wear.
Tubing and/or other elongate members are used to form roll cages in vehicles. One such category of vehicles in which roll cages are often implemented is forklift vehicles. However, many other vehicles also use roll cages, including but not limited to: various vehicles used to move material and equipment within a factory or warehouse, cranes, industrial and farm tractors, utility vehicles, crane type vehicles used in multi-storied warehouses, racing cars and trucks, etc. Such vehicles can come in contact with stationary or movable objects, or other vehicles, and this continuous contact can cause a roll cage to wear in certain locations. The protector assembly is designed to accept such wear in order to preserve the roll cage.
A roll cage on a forklift vehicle typically includes cage-uprights, e.g. four generally upright pieces of tubing which extend upwardly from the chassis and/or body of the vehicle. The uppermost portions of the cage-uprights are connected to each other by generally horizontally oriented pieces of tubing. The upright and horizontal tubing members collectively define an enclosure structure which encapsulates the forklift operator.
Accordingly, the roll cage of a forklift provides the operator some protection in certain adverse situations. Exemplary of such adverse situations are roll-overs, side impacts, failings objects, and others.
Forklifts are used for lifting, lowering, and transporting objects, loads, and/or other goods, whereby they are particularly well suited for use in warehousing environments. Factories and warehouses often include racking e.g. racks and/or series of racks, to enable a user to store goods vertically, which relatively increases the useful storage space of the available ground square footage as compared to a warehouse without racking.
Warehouse racking can be arranged in a variety of suitable configurations. Exemplary of such configurations are drive-in racking configurations and drive-through racking configurations. Drive-in and through racking configurations have rows which include aisles defined between adjacent upright structures of e.g. pallet racking. Each row is commonly used to store product all of a single, or various few, kind/sku.
The pallet racking has elongate L-shaped brackets, or rails, which extend along the length of the row and generally define the outermost perimeter of the respective aisle. In other words, the L-shaped brackets or rails each have a vertical rail portion, and a horizontal rail portion which extends outwardly into the aisle e.g. generally parallel to the ground.
In drive-in and through racking configurations, the distance between the L-shaped rails corresponds to the width of a pallet to be stored thereupon. And the distance between the edges of the horizontal rail portions, of the L-shaped rails on opposite sides of the same aisle, which extend furthest into the aisle, is of lesser magnitude than the magnitude of the width dimension of the pallet. Thus, when a forklift operator wishes to store a pallet on, for example, a second level of the racking, the operator must first lift the pallet load to a height which is greater than the height of the second level of the racking before the pallet enters the racking. Then the forklift operator can drive the pallet into the second level of the racking as desired.
When a forklift operator drives the pallet sufficiently far into the racking, the forklift itself enters the aisle. And since the edges of the horizontal rail portions extend relatively far into the aisles and thus since the aisles are relatively narrow, portions of the forklift vehicles traveling down the aisles, namely the roll cages, are susceptible to contact with horizontal rail portions.
Since the rows tend to be commonly used to store product all of a single, or various few, kind/sku, the height levels at which the L-shaped rails are installed is generally constant along the entire length of any particular row e.g. on both sides of any aisle. Thus, when a forklift operator makes multiple passes down the same aisle, the operator subjects the same portion of the roll cage to contact with the horizontal rail portion. Over time, the contact on that portion of the roll cage is cut into, and/or material is otherwise removed, by the horizontal rail portion.
In other words, as the driver drives the pallet along the length of the aisle, thus to put the pallet in the stack or upon the rack, or to remove the pallet from the stack or rack, the driver focuses his/her attention on the pallet, and drives the forklift so as to facilitate movement of the pallet relative to the racking. Meantime, the cage of the forklift is only a little narrower than the space between the side racking elements, namely the horizontal rail portions.
As a result, since the driver is concentrating on the movement and condition of the pallet, not on the movement of the forklift per se, the cage routinely scrapes along the edge of the horizontal member of the racking at the first level.
Since all of the racking within an aisle, and sometime within a warehouse, is built at a common height, the scraping on the cage is all at a given height on the cage uprights. While the racking horizontal rail portion is not per se sharp, it is relatively thin and strong, whereby repeated, and/or prolonged scraping of the cage uprights on the racking causes the racking to cut into the cage uprights. If the cage uprights are not properly serviced, one or more of the uprights becomes so worn/cut through that the corresponding upright is no longer able to serve its desired protective function.
Damaged cage uprights cannot be repaired by e.g. welding, under current safety guidelines because of the potential for defects in a field-applied welding process. Accordingly, it is common for forklift operators or owners to replace the cage and/or a cage assembly at regular intervals, at substantial cost to the owner of the forklift. Such costs are measured both in terms of cost of the replacement parts, the cost of the downtime of the machine, and potentially, downtime of the operator.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a protective assembly for a roll cage on a vehicle which is adapted and configured to absorb any scraping, grinding, physical contact, etc. caused by moving the vehicle pass a stationary or movable object.